Cross-form conceptual relations between sounds and words: effects on the novelty P3.

In order for cross-form conceptual priming to occur, the brain must extract an amodal representation of the presented concept. To determine whether the novelty P3 would show such cross-form effects, novel, environmental sounds or their verbal equivalents were repeated two blocks after their first presentation in two cross-form conditions, word-sound (e.g., the word "pig" followed by the sound "oink") or sound-word. Conceptual repetition engendered an asymmetric reduction in novelty P3 amplitude, i.e., amplitude was reduced in the sound-word but not in the word-sound condition. The data suggest that the novelty P3 reflects an evaluative stage of processing in which some semantic information is extracted. However, the lack of amplitude reduction for the word-sound condition implies that, at least at the delays used here, repetition as a conceptually equivalent sound may have failed to make contact with the initial verbal concept.